The identification and measurement of relative poverty is the basis for targeting poor people and formulating poverty reduction policies. However, proportional income method and FGT index, which are often used to identify and measure the relative poverty respectively, have been questioned in terms of theoretical basis, proportion setting and poverty properties. Using the identification method of weakly relative poverty based on the cost of social inclusion and the hierarchical additive overall poverty index applicably, and considering the coherence with current standards of the China’s absolute poverty line and the comparability with international standards, this paper estimates the weakly relative income (consumption) poverty lines and measures the overall income (consumption) poverty in urban and rural China over the period 2012-2018. Our empirical analysis, based on data from China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) show that the hierarchical additive overall poverty index based on the weakly relative poverty line gives consideration to both absolute poverty and relative poverty, which can avoid the problem that absolute and relative poverty based on the FGT method evolved in opposite directions, and can more directly evaluate the overall poverty reduction effect of economic growth and poverty alleviation policies. Although relative poverty is always at a high level due to inequality, we can still conclude that overall income (consumption) poverty has been robustly reduced over the period in both urban and rural China because of a strong decrease in absolute poverty. From the perspective of social inclusion, housing costs and child-rearing costs should be taken into account to set the standard of weakly relative poverty by family type in further research. This paper is valuable to further target relatively poor people by category, monitor the evolution of weakly relative poverty, and evaluate the overall poverty reducation effect.
